. >> the other side of this is the question of whether or not speaker boehner can deliver votes. the thing that a lot of people worry about in private is him and obama will cut a deal in late december negotiations. but boehner has been making tough calls. when it comes down to it he's going to agree to something with the president and it is not going to be able to pass his own conference. do you have any sense of what you think he's able to do and not do at this point? >> we come back again to the entitlement question. it's going to be easier for the caucus to swallow some tax rate increase if they have something to show for it. and the irony here, on a whole variety of issue, the democrats should be in favor of certain kinds of entitlement reforms. it's not actually that big of a give. on social security, as an example, democrats have won for the time being on privatization being completely off the table. there's a strong argument for trying to lock that in now as oppose eed to waiting and having that potentially come back. in addition, one of the big concerns here is doing too